So I am once again looking for full time work. I hate job hunting, just so annoying and a stupid process. I have been thinking a lot lately about what I actually want to do in the future, know what I came up with? I still have no idea. I am more leaning towards getting my AZ licence so that I can drive any big truck and there is always work in that field and while I drive and make money just think about what I really want to be doing. I don't mind actually just doing deliveries from my experience with it.

How many of you have full time work? Where are you working? How did you get that job? Do you like it? And feel free to add anything else.

N8R wrote:That has taken a lot of work though hasn't it? Had you always wanted to be a lawyer?

Yeah. School is 3 years - and not easy (at least the one I went to).

I'm currently studying for the New York Bar Exam. I take it next Tuesday and Wednesday. It is going to be awful and I haven't slept in two weeks. I fell asleep briefly on top of my Chipotle burrito an hour ago. I had rice on my face.

I don't know that I'd always wanted to be a lawyer so much as I didn't know what else to do.

I with N8R and Pig Nash. I have no idea what I want to do as a Career.

My job is admittedly awesome but it has its drawbacks. Basically every "pro" can be turned into a "con" in the right light.

For those who don't know I'm an EMT at a private Ambulance Service. The private sector is MUCH different than what you get with the government.In the private sector we transport little old ladies and war vets who cant get around any other way. OUR company is a little different in that we also cover a 911 area. So there is the occasional car crash victim or heart attack.

ANYWAY, for the most part I get paid to talk to retirees, surf the internet on our down times, eat, sleep, watch movies, play xbox, tv etc. We have to drive long distances because of the vets we take. They like to live out in the middle of nowhere so if the Commies invade they are hidden. The stations are set up like apartments and have kitchens, full baths, bedrooms, etc. The downside to the job is as an EMT the pay is not good at all. It just can't be fixed. There is a lot of lifting of fat people, smelly people.... I have to interact with those who are deemed an isolation risk because they have bacteria, or viruses, or infections. I take people who have shat themselves and the nurses couldn't be bothered to clean them up. I take people who have rotting pieces of flesh: gangrene, bed sores, infected amputations.

I witness firsthand why health care costs so much and do everything in my power to reduce our costs, our bills, the patients bills but I can only do so much.

I LOVE my job but its a question of long term commitment. Do I want to make it my career? I see the people who have been here longer than a few years and I see their lives draining. Older people who have no other skills. THIS is their career and there is very little room for advancement. They have to lift all day, which I don't mind. They have to interact with the nurses who NEVER know what is happening or the patients who are just trying to scam workmans comp or whatever. They are so jaded. They hate their jobs. I don't want to become that. I LOVE my job but do I want to make it my career?

I know what I would like to do for a living. . . how many years it takes to get people to start paying me for it is another question. I want to write until my fingers fall off; read and write incessantly for hopefully 60 years, and see what kind of work I can eventually make w/ that much practice. I want to make something worthy of Emerson, Milton, Whitman. W/ careers like writing where the supply of wannabe writers far outnumbers the need for them, you have to work your ASS off in order to make a living; you need to be that good. I'm trying to do that. . . my project the last few months has been learning how to become a better researcher, how to learn things deeply and quickly. I figure the ability to master a huge amount of detail quickly would be a decent 'asset' in my quest to sell my writing. . .

I recently decided it woud be good if I went to law school to study environmental law. Getting in will be the hard part for me, considering I've wasted the last two years working for a directory publishing company. I haven't taken any science classes since high school, but I "aced" the A.P. test, so that's gotta count for something right?

Well I've been taking it easy for the past couple weeks, mainly because I'm asleep almost all the time. But lately I've been reading up on what we actually do when we do what's called "paying attention." What happens in our brains, minds - it kinda fascinates me, the power of simply paying attention to a thing. Eventually I want to try to write some kinda book that somehow synthesizes everything I've been wondering about attention, but that's a very long time away.

Well I think there are subconscious modes of attention. I was reading something about this just yesterday, though I'm not certain how convinced of it I was.

Some would argue that subconscious attention is what goes wrong in depression - the mind fixates automatically on gloomy/dreadful/bleak thoughts.

I started all this interested most in conscious attention, acts of volition - but of course its effect on the subconscious mind and how it reworks the brain is where the payoff is, if you begin thinking a lot about attention.

My role model has been Zen monks, who meditate for long hours each day on simply feeling compassion for all sentient beings - they're been proven to be much more naturally capable of empathy, because of their practice.

I'm interested in how what we pay attention to shapes us, both positively and negatively. Part of it is trying to figure out how things went wrong w/ my depression, and trying to figure out how I can inhabit the state of mind that Emerson called "Reason in Nature's lotus drenched" more often.

SiG wrote:I'm interested in how what we pay attention to shapes us, both positively and negatively. Part of it is trying to figure out how things went wrong w/ my depression, and trying to figure out how I can inhabit the state of mind that Emerson called "Reason in Nature's lotus drenched" more often.

I like this

Fascinating topic, for sure. The what that we choose to focus on is surely important, but also the how (at least it would seem). If the mind fixates on gloomy thoughts then that would cover the "what" - but perhaps the thoughts are not gloomy to begin with? But it is the "how" that is making them gloomy? Aye - those poor psychoanalysts.